Designed to impress

Emerging from the shadows of Spains two leading cities, Valencia has reinvented itself with magnificent architecture and a hip bar scene, writes Tom Lappin

This is a vision of Europe’s future, and spectacular it is too. The Spanish tried to rebuild Europe back in the 16th century and failed, thanks to Sir Francis Drake. However, nobody seems to want to stop a 21st-century armada of Spanish architects happily reshaping the continent from Holyrood to Huelva with panache (and a disregard for budgets in some cases).

You can’t help but crack a broad Manchego-munching grin at the first sight of the architect Santiago Calatrava’s magnificent Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias, a hyper-modern mini-city built in the drained river bed of the Turia, between old Valencia and the Mediterranean.

In part it’s a 1950s science-fiction vision of the future, all spaceship curves and rippling parabolas. And in part it’s a cool expression of 21st-century Spanish confidence. A country that managed to modernise its entire moribund constitution and political structure in a couple of decades